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LP 1974: EMI Reflexe 1C 063-30123
CD 2000: EMI Classics 8 26492 2
Seite 1
Aufgenommen: 1.-3.V.1973, München, Bürgerbräu
1. Planctus David [22:31]
Andrea von Ramm, mezzosoprano, organetto
Richard Levitt, alto, percussions
Sterling Jones, lyra, rebec
Thomas Binkley, lute
Seite 2
Aufgenommen: 14.-17.VI.1974, Berlin, Studio Zehlendorf
2. Planctus Jephta [15:24]
Andrea von Ramm, mezzosoprano
Sally Smith, Barbara Thornton, Pilar Figueras, Montserrat Savall (CD: Figueras) – singers
Sterling Jones, lyra
Thomas Binkley, flute
Richard Levitt, tabor
Hymnus
3. O quanta qualia [7:48]
Andrea von Ramm, mezzosoprano
Richard Levitt, alto
Sterling Jones, chitarra saracenica
Thomas Binkley, lute
CD:
Produzent: Gerd Berg
Tonmeister: Johann-Nikolaus Matthes
Titelbild: Héloise und Abélard, Miniatur aus
Le Roman de la Rose von Jean de Meung (15. Jhdt.-);
Château de Conde, Chantilly
Cover-Design: Patelli
Litho: Repro Schmitz KG, Cologne
Ⓟ 1974 EMI Electrola GmbH
Digital reamastering Ⓟ 2000 by EMI Electrola GmbH
© 2000 by EMI Electrola GmbH
THE MUSIC OF PETER ABELARD
Peter
Abelard (1079-1142) was born in Pallet near Nantes, the first son of a
noble family. Going against tradition as he did all of his life,
Abelard looked for a career of the mind rather than to continue his
family traditions. He studied dialectic and describes himself as a pupil
of Roscellinus, canon of Compiègne (died after 1120), master of
Nominalism. When but twenty he went to Paris where he visited the
lectures of William of Champeaux, the disciple of St. Anselm, who
related faith and reason in an attempt to establish proof of God'd
existence. There was real conflict! Boethius' Universals were at the
bottom of it: for Anselm, the rational and the real were one, white for
Roscellinus only the individual entities were real - the persons of the
Trinity were real, the idea of Trinity unreal. Abelard crystallized a
new aid moderate position after defeating his teacher William who had to
admit that his theory of essences was not tenable. Abelard viewed
Universals as real things but only in the object, and neither
before nor after it. (Unknown to Abelard, this same discussion had been
resolved in a similar manner by Arab philosophers in the previous
century). About 1115 he was given the chair at Notre Dame. He got into
difficulty when he applied his doctrine to the Trinity, but this
difficulty was less crucial in his life than another, more violent one
Abelard,
young, personable, brilliant and famous teacher in Paris, became
attracted to the niece of the canon Fulbert, and this young woman was
herself of good house, attractive and unusually quick of mind. Abelard
became resident in the house of Fulbert and teacher to his niece
Héloise. The love between the pair is a story often told - how Héloise
became pregnant, how Fulbert discovered the relationship, how Héloise
went to Brittany where she gave birth to a son, how Abelard married her
under a promise of secrecy (to protect his career), and how Fulbert
broke the secrecy. Héloise's womanly devotion led her to deny that she
was married to Abelard and with Abelard's help went to her childhood
convent of Argenteuil. Fulbert, humiliated by Héloise's bold and drastic
actions, and firmly believing that Abelard was throwing her off,
organized his revenge. By dark of night Fulbert's two envoys broke into
Abelard's room and castrated him. Abelard then experienced years of
abject misery. He could no longer become a priest nor hold canonic
office. He went to the Abbey of St Denis but found no peace there. He
returned to teaching, but was charged with the heresy of Sabellius
because of his rational approach to the Doctrine of the Trinity.
His
teaching temporarily at an end, he was shut up in a monastery. He was
unpersonable, disliked, and soon forced to leave because of his talent
for find, objectionable and sensitive questions for debate. He tried to
become a hermit, but his solace was broken by the arrival of large
numbers of students who replaced his hut with a building which since
then has born the name Paraclete. Abelard left the Paraclete to assume
the directorship of an abbey in the North, of St Gildas de Rhys. There
he struggled for ten years with an unruly house which defied reform and
very nearly saw Abelard killed. Héloise, who had taken orders at
Agenteuil was in search of a new place when she and her nuns were
evicted. Abelard was able to have her installed in the Paraclete which
had been empty since he moved away. Faced with the threat of violence at
St Gildas, Abelard left. Soon after he produced his Historia Calamitatum, a sort of autobiography. A copy of the Historia
reached Paraclete, and Héloise's reaction was to begin a correspondence
with her husband and former lover, from whom she had no communication
for about a dozen years. Héloise probably did not know all the
misfortunes of Abelard since the separation, She points out that he is
wasting his efforts to reform people who pay no attention to him while
the nuns at the Paraclete would respond eagerly to his advice and
encouragement. She demands a personal explanation of Abelard's silence
and lack of acknowledgement of Héloise sacrifice of entering monastic
life out of love not of God but of Abelard. Abelard's response was to
write to Héloise as an abbot to an abbess, and to refuse to be engaged
on a persona level. He refers to the power of prayer and the integrity
of faith. Héloise replied that she had taken vows because of Abelard,
that the sexual frustration she experienced was severe and that she
found it hateful to live such a hypocritical life. This letter is full
of passion and painful in its description of a soul in desperate agony.
Abelard's
response is a light reprimand. He will not bring up the past with
nostalgic remorse. They had sinned. They had made love in the nunnery of
Argenteuil and even during the Passion Season they had made love in the
house of Fulbert, and in many other ways they had taken God lightly.
She should look to Christ who really loved her and who had suffered more
for her than had Abelard.
Never again did the two exchange
personal letters. They did continue to communicate with each other but
always in matters of institutional significance. Héloise ask for advice
in regulating matter at the Paraclete, how the nuns should dress and how
much work they should do. She asks for information on he history of
nuns and nunneries, and advice on food. Abelard prepared two long Letters of Direction, still formal documents.
In
another letter of Abelard we find a response to one now lost of Héloise
in which Héloise had requested that Abelard write new hymns for the
Paraclete. Abelard notes in his letters that Héloise's reasons for the
request are strong: " ... I have written what are called hymns in Greek
and tehillim in Hebrew. At first I thought it superfluous for me to
write new hymns when you had plenty of old ones ... (but you wrote) that
the Latin Church in general and the French in particular follows
customary usage rather than authority as regards both hymns and psalms
... the translation of the psalter is of doubtful origin ... the hymns
are in considerable confusion ... the words so irregular that is
impossible to fit them to the melodies ... " (Cousin vol. 1 p. 296-8).
Evidently Abelard sent a total of 133 Hymns to the Paraclete in three
books.
In another letter Abelard seems to refer to the six Planctus
(Laments) he composed when he wrote: "I recently completed at your
request a little book of hymns or sequences (!) ... and then as you
asked me several short sermons." (Cousin vol. 1 p. 350). Abelard
explains that he placed emphasis on the literary clarity in the sermons
(and also the sequences?) in order to be able to reach the women (in the
Paraclete) of little understanding.
If we keep in mind that hymn meant for Héloise simply the praise of God in song,
and that Abelard equated his real hymns with the Greek word and the
Hebrew word, but when referring to this "little book" he equates them
with sequences, which in essence the planctus are, then it seems
convincing that his "little book of hymns or sequences" is the
collection of six planctus and not part of the 133 hymns.
There
is no evidence that Abelard ever again visited the Paraclete nor came in
personal contact with Héloise. Apparently was teaching in Paris when
his final great conflict occurred, his conflict with Bernard of
Clairvaux, St Bernard. Bernard, a Cistercien, offered an alternative to
the dominant Benedictine rule of Cluny, at that time led by another
great man, Peter the Venerable. The difference between these two rules
is important: the Benedictine rule was older and attempted a life
according to the spirit of the law, white the Cistercien was a
new order attempting to revive the asceticism of the "Desert Fathers of
Anthony, friend of Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria, and the fratres peregrinos.
Bernard believed that faith, not learning led to Christ. Nothing should
be learned that was not learned in the pursuit of Salvation.
Clearly
the clash between Abelard and St. Bernard was of far greater meaning
than simply the clash between two strong and proud men: it was the
search for the resolution of a cardinal problem of the 12th century.
Abelard feels that with his knowledge he is defending the Christian
faith white Bernard feels that faith transcends knowledge. The problem
was not resolved. Alter considerable intrigue, Bernard was able to see
Abelard declared a heretic and his followers excommunicated. Peter the
Venerable intervened on the side of Abelard and the sentence was
rescinded. A year and a half later Abelard died in a Cluniac monastery
at St. Marcel near Châlon-sur-Saône.
Astralabe, the son of
Abelard and Héloise never pictured prominently in the lives of the two.
One simple event: Astralabe (an anagram of the French version of
Abelard, Esbaillard = Asbelart?) was aided by Peter the Venerable to
obtain a church benefice after Abelard's death.
One is tempted to
treat the collection of Latin Planctus as part of the catharsis
attempted by Abelard during Me 1130s about the time he wrote the Historia Calamitatum.
All of the planctus are old-Testament situations of human calamity.
Jacob's ravished daughter. Jacob's lament as his youngest son Benjamin
leaves for Egypt, lsraeli vergines lament the daughter of Jephta, the
people of Israel lament the death of Samson and David laments the death
of Saul, Jonathan and Abner. There is no previous tradition to account
for Abelard's selecting to write such accounts of biblical stories. As
mentioned above, they were probably written for the nuns of the
Paraclete to make the suffering in stories more real by retelling them
in the first person.
All six Planctus are contained in the
manuscript Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apost. Vaticana Cod. Reg. lat.
288. Many attempts have been made to transcribe the staffless neums in
this manuscript but none have been really successful. More recently with
the discovery of these works in other manuscripts it is possible to
come somewhat closer to the original. The David Planctus survives in the
manuscript Oxford University Library Ms, Bodl. 79 fol. 53'-56, an
English 13th century manuscript written in square notation on a
four-line staff. Another version of the David Planctus is contained in
the manuscript Paris Bibl. Nat. f. nouv. a. Latin 3126, fol. 88'-90'.
This is a late 12th century manuscript also written in square notation
on a four-line staff.
There are no knowm concordant sources fort
other Abelard Planctus, although material help in the transcription of
Jephta comes in its proximity to a French Secular piece, the lai des pucelles.
The manuscript, Paris Bibl. Nat. f. fr. 12615, fol 711, 13 century,
presents this piece in square notation on a five-line staff. Although by
no means identical to the Abelard Planctus, it is very similar to it.
We
cannot pretend that these melodies are absolutely identical to
Abelard's, any more than we can be certain the Vatican manuscript
preserves the melodies in original form, however it is important to
stress that this element of historical accuracy is less necessary than
in much other music. The melody is not composed as an expressive line
complementing the text but rather, as is very common in 12th century
composition, fragments of melodic material are architecturally combined
to enhance the structure of the poetry. Thus it is possible to find wide
differences in the preserved melodies of the David Planctus, for
example, without any being wrong, nor less well fulfilling the function
of that melody.
If the reader will agree with me that these
Planctus were originally written by Abelard for the nuns of the
Paraclete, then it is not unreasonable to perform one as it might have
been done there, sung by female voices. The use of instruments is
perfectly in keeping with Héloise's rule there as well as in harmony
with French practice of Adam of St. Victor and others. In the case of
the David planctus we have made the Performance somewhat later in style
in conformity with the later sources, a performance in a more
international vein.
The hymn O quanta qualia was still
more popular than any of the Planctus. It is one of the four hymns that
became part of the repertory of the cloisters other than the Paraclete.
We find it in a manuscript at St. Gall, Stiftsbibl. 528, containing the
repertory of the Großmünster in Zürich (14th century), and it was a
permanent part of the repertory al the Cistercian abbey ot Rheinau. How
ironic that St. Bernard's Cistercians should be the ones to transmit a
hymn of Abelard, for apart from more major differences between the two,
Abelard once admonished Bernard for composing new hymns which Abelard
felt were superfluous! Héloise had written to Abelard that hymns were
the praise of God in song, that she needed them for her nuns, and
Abelard wrote them with the idea that they be easy to learn and to
remember. It seems reasonable to suppose that these hymns were not only
liturgical but were devotional. Thus the performance here is not that
expected in the celebration of the mass but that of the oratory.
The
music of Peter Abelard will never attain the stature of his
philosophical importance, yet it is one side of a remarkable personality
and helps to complete a picture of this man of the 12th century, a man
of the mind, of the flesh and of the spirit, a man of pride and passion
and of suffering
Thomas Binkley
Bibliography:
· V. Cousin, Petri Abaelardi opera, Paris 1848
· Lorenz Weinrich, Peter Abélard as Musician, MQ vol. LV No. 3-4
· Giuseppe Vecchi, Pietro Abélardo I, Modena 1951
· E. M. Bannister, Monumenti Vaticani..., vol. XII, Leipzig 1913
· Bruno Stäblein, MMMA 1. Kassel 1956
· Additional bibliography of Weinrich
